Initiation
by Hawkins437
Summary: Her reality blends with fiction as she is driven by a mysterious force to leave Bright Falls, the site of inexplicable events she cannot recall. Armed with light, she is tasked to protect a shoebox containing the remnants of someone's existence and keep it from falling into the hands of a force of darkness wearing a familiar face... One-shot.


_Wake up._

The words seem to flash beneath her eyelids as the surface of the lake closes behind her. Each letter punctuated by a click of a typewriter as if her story was being written out by an invisible author. As if she'd merely been a character in someone's story. A cluster of words on a sheet of paper.

How would the writer describe her, she wonders. How could she be sure that she was truly a woman? Was it because she'd been written that way?

_Breathe,_ the words tell her and she obeys unquestioningly, disturbed by her own complacency. After all, why should she obey? She was a woman of agency. Or had that been written out, too?

_Open your eyes._

Her lids are pried apart. She looks around... a body of water in her sight... An ocean? _No, a lake,_ a voice corrects her and it is suddenly so, shielded by a wooded mountain range in all directions. Under her, damp soil, soggy planks of wood, an island of muddy brown in a pool of darkness. She inspects her hands and it is only then that she realises their weight as if she'd only now gained them. But she'll need more for what's to come. She leans over the edge of island, peering into the dark waters. A spectre stares back from the surface—pale, delicate, a woman indeed; hands, arms, shoulders, chest and belly, thighs and knees, legs tucked beneath her on the ground. A blurry face on a slender neck, fleshy lips, short stub of a nose, high cheekbones, wide eyes, their colour indiscernible in the dark, her hair smooth, long past her shoulders, shaded fair brown to blonde, wet like the underwear she only now feels on her skin. Her lip quivers. It's cold. Why didn't she have any clothes on?

Overhead a shadow springs. A notice board.

_Diver's Isle._

The writer slips a flashlight into her hand. _Use the light_, the words command.

Her muscles strain against the shiver, she rises as if tugged upward by a string of words. The light flashes in her hand, pointing the way towards a wooden cabin that she could've sworn wasn't there a sentence ago.

She'll need more than a body for where her journey shall take her, even though she doesn't know that yet. For now, clothes will do.

She walks into the cabin, guarding herself against the dark. She feels a tremor other than the cold. Was she afraid of the dark?

Furniture pops into existence out of the even clicking of the typewriter; the writer practising his craft—a presence always in her mind, by now almost a soothing one. Someone is looking after her, she knows. Someone who might bring her through a terrible ordeal before the journey's end, but cares nonetheless. Even bereft of history as she is now, it feels familiar.

Staircase takes her up to a bedroom with strange round windows. A swarm of birds flies by. She looks away.

A suitcase by the bed flies open. She sifts through the clothes, changes into something dry. Then jeans, a blouse, leather jacket, boots.

Bit by bit she dons on identity. The suitcase gives her clues. A camera. A book. A wedding photo, but the groom's face has been scratched out.

Lastly, a name.

The keys type away, but the letters are scattered, out of order.

_E. C. I. L. A._

She ponders the possible combinations, but only really considers two. Celia? Alice?

The typewriter's clank amplifies. She turns around.

There's now a table where emptiness has been, on it a typewriter clicking away, absent of an operator. The words cower at the touch of light. She aims the beam away.

_Take the shoebox._

A shoebox appears next to the typewriter, filled with a few dusty volumes of poetry. _Thomas Zane, _the spines say.

"Never heard of him."

Her voice brings sound into the story. The typewriter stops. Now wind rustles the leaves outside the cabin. Ripples play on the surface of the lake. Although she did not notice before, the absence of silence startles her. The writer's comfort fades away. She is no longer alone in this world. He is working away on the rest of it now that his heroine has been defined.

He? How did she come to assume that the author is a he?

A flap of wings outside the window, they peer in with strange glazed eyes and scatter abruptly at the touch of her flashlight's beam.

There is one more thing in the shoebox. A stack of papers, unbound, smeared with dirt, crumpled and dog-eared, bloodstained in places. A manuscript. The top sheet reads the title _Departure. _The author's name is blotted out; the page glistens as if wet. She can discern only the first letter and the four at the end. _A WAKE._

The familiar comfort of the typewriter returns, keys clamouring for attention.

_Protect it._ _It's the only thing connecting me to the world._

Without question she closes the shoebox and takes it under her arm.

A gust of wind strains against the window pane, she aims the beam of the flashlight towards it a sees the window dripping ink onto the floor, a black puddle tracing the furrowed surface of the wood, thin tendrils of darkness swirling rapidly towards her.

An echo resonates in her head. A voice she finds vaguely familiar.

_It's here. There's no more time. You need to go, now._

_Wake up._

Her eyes open to the blinding flashes of the police light.

"Wake up."

"I am awake." Alice says, blinking the discomfort away. Her car has been pulled over at a rest stop at the edge of a town. Reflected in the rear-view mirror, a signboard clues her in on her whereabouts: _Welcome to Bright Falls, _she reads, squinting.

"Mrs Wake?"

She turns towards the voice. She's looking at a woman, brunette, armed, clad in a sheriff's uniform. Sarah Breaker.

"Leaving before the Deer Fest is over?" she asks.

"Never was a fan of hunting season, anyway. So many guns around make me feel uneasy."

"You sure you're up to such a long drive at this hour, Mrs Wake?" the sheriff leans in, inspecting Alice's face for signs of fatigue. "It's been a rough couple of days. Maybe you should at least grab some coffee at the diner before you go."

Alice feels a surge of gratitude over what passes unsaid between them. Although her memory of the events is hazy at best—the remnants distorted or redacted as if altered by the author in an afterthought—the word _rough _would be doing the whole ordeal a disservice. From the few moments she can pinpoint with some clarity, she recalls being kidnapped or drowning, then a sense of impenetrable darkness permeating her, asphyxiating despair, the time itself slipping out of reach. Later, when she finally came to, she would be told of the inexplicable death toll and disappearance of numerous Bright Falls residents.

Her own husband was on the list, presumed dead.

"No thanks, I've brought my own." she says, pointing towards the passenger seat where a blue thermos sits snugly next to a worn shoebox weighted down by a flashlight, with a few flares and a pack of batteries scattered around.

The sheriff nods, noticing the supplies. "Stay in the light." she says, waving the car onward.

The engine roars as Alice puts her foot on the gas, leaving the history of Bright Falls behind her. Or so she has hoped.

For miles on end she passes dense lines of trees bending forward as if to hinder her departure, alternated by rocky hills clothed in foggy darkness. Ominous wind wheezes past the windows. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a flock of dark silhouettes circling the bleak pale light of the Moon, watching. She reassures herself that she is safe in the capsule of the car dashing across the countryside towards the cities flooded with lights, her comfort. The only other company is the static of the malfunctioning radio over the hum of the car's engine.

She hums to herself quietly a melody she cannot really place.

The brakes screech into a halt as a man appears in the headlights. Tall, dark-haired, three layers of jackets on his back. Sparks fly away from his silhouette where light touches him. The face is familiar, but the eyes harsh, alien.

The man flashes a toothy grin at the driver as he walks towards the car.

She tries to say: "Alan?" but all that comes out is a scratching sound.

A knife gleams in the headlights as he approaches, making for the passenger side door.

Instinctively, she reaches into the pocket of her jacket, groping around for something the writer must have put in there. She pulls out an old yellowed lightswitch and flicks it with her shaking fingers.

A flash.

The world erupts into daylight just as the hitchhiker opens the door and reaches out to grab the shoebox by her side.

Sun warms her face through the windshield. The breeze flowing in through the opened door smells of Indian summer. Birds sing in the trees whose ominous shadows have been washed away by the rays of light.

The man is gone.

There is but a scratch of a knife on the window to remind her that what had occurred wasn't a dream.

She pockets the lightswitch carefully, closes the car door, then she peers under the lid of the shoebox, making sure the manuscript is intact.

The clamour of static is hushed as the radio signal finally resumes. Judas Priest's _Turn on Your Light_ starts playing. She smiles, putting her foot to the pedal once more, driving further into the daylight.

It's a beautiful day for a departure.


End file.
